I need to update an XML document stored in a Microsoft SQL Server database, however the vendor of the product chose to store the XML in a TEXT column.
I've been able to extract the TEXT into an XML-type variable and perform the update I need on the xml within this variable, but when I try to UPDATE the column to push the change back to the database, I run into trouble.
Looking through the documentation it appears that it's not possible to simply CAST/CONVERT an XML type variable to insert it into a TEXT column, but I would think there is some way to extract the xml "string" from the XML-type variable and UPDATE the column using this value.
Any suggestions are appreciated, but I would like to keep the solution pure SQL that it can be run directly (no C# custom function, etc.); just to keep the impact on the database minimal.
(note: isn't it a bit absurd that you can't just CAST XML as TEXT? I'm just saying...)